Ezra Pound: Poetry and Politics

EzraPound:PoetryandPolitics DavidAnderson, ed. Pound:f Cavalcanti: An Edition of the Translations, Notes and Essavs. Pnnceton: P~inceton University Press, 1983. · 297 + xxxvipp. DanielHoffman, ed. Ezra Pound and WtlltamCarlos Williams. The University of PennsylvaniaPress, 1983.247 + xx pp. E.FullerTorrey, M.D. The Roots of Treason: E:1aPound and the Secret of St. Elizabeths. NewYork: McGraw-Hill, 1984.339 + xx pp. Douglas Smith These three books testify to the continuing growth of Pound studies, and two ofthe three suggest that if readers are going to consider the poet's work at all, theymust consider it in the light of his politics. E. Fuller Torrey, for example, begins his book on Pound's controversial incarceration at St. Elizabeths Hospital with the bold assertion that ··recent release of files in the [U.S. I Department of Justice ... has made it possible to understand Ezra Pound''; he alsoclaims that an understanding of the man "in turn permits an understanding ofhis poetry, for the man and the poems are one" (p. xix). That one can truly "understand'' any author, let alone one as complex as Ezra Pound, and thus "understand" his poetry, is a claim that sees very little literary sophistication inits making; a mere undergraduate's passing familiarity with the biographical fallacy would suggest as much, while a more finely tuned critical sensibility might regard a statement such as "the man and his poems are one" as particularly irresponsible and foolish, especially when applied to a poet whose oeuvre stresses objectivity and includes a book called Personae. Granted, there must always be something of the author in his work, but in attempting to tell the "true story" (p. xix) of Ezra Pound, Dr. Torrey assumes , that everything of the man appears in his work and, conversely, that everything inthe work can be traced directly to the man. If this sounds like first-generation Freudian psychology at work, it is, and it pervades The Roots of Treason. Canadian Review of American Studies. Volume 17, Number 4, Winter 1986, 504-524 510 Douglas Smith This isunfortunate, since Torrey does at times provide an original perspective on Pound; but he simplyfails to understand that Pound's vicious anti-Semitism and racism cannot be so simply attributed to personality, since the man did not exist in a cultural vacuum. Moreover, Torrey seems to be unaware that, for modem poets, personality and poetic persona were rarely, ifever, identical. Torrey might defend himself by arguing that his book is not a literary biography at all, but a psychological one. This would call into question the result even more seriously, however,since whatever psychoanalyzing occurs in The Roots of Treason remains rather superficial. Had Torrey promised only to shed new light on Pound's life in a mental hospital and on the conspiracies that saved him from a firing squad, the book would satisfy; but Torrey promises much more, and he must be judged-as he himself judges Pound-by what he promises, as well as by what he provides. In the early chapters of his book, while recounting the tribulations that Pound suffered as a gifted child, Torrey begins his annoying habit of equating poet with persona. In a very brief discussion of "Plotinus," from A Lume Spento (1908), Torrey states: "It was perhaps these early years he had in mind when he wrote .... ": But I was lonely as a child. I cried amid the void and heard no cry, And then for utter loneliness, made I New thoughts as crescent images of me. And with them was my essence reconciled While fear went forth from mine eternity. (p. 22) How Torrey can assume that the "I" speaking here is actually Pound speaking about himself is rather bewildering. Did he ask himself if it was Pound or Plotinus who had "cried amid the void," or whose "fear went forth from [his] eternity"? Similarly, in a discussion of "Anima Sola," Torrey assumes that Pound is describing himself as "a weird untam'd/That eat of no man's meat" (p. 44), ignoring, as he does with "Plotinus," the obvious distancing device in the poem's very title. It also becomes quite clear in the first few chapters that Torrey considers...